Rescue off Nantucket

J. Shamus Fleming aboard the Shamus enjoys taking the boat to his hideaway. PAXTON — The phrase “Pay it forward” has new meaning for Paxton stockbroker J. Shamus Fleming these days.

Fleming can’t help but think of a day in 1987 when, on one of his first times out with his 20-foot boat The Shamus, he and some friends became stranded and had to radio for help. A tuna fishing vessel came to their aid, got them loose and towed them to safe harbor.

That day, Fleming was conscious of the service the fishermen had rendered him and his friends. He offered the captain a reward for the rescue, but the captain, instead, gave Fleming a pearl of wisdom about seagoing folk.

“We don’t accept money, this is the rule of the sea,” the captain told him. “Someday you’re going to have the chance to save somebody.”

“It took a long time to have that payback,” Fleming says, “but it came.”

It came last Friday, in fact.

That day Fleming and his girlfriend, Mehtap Aslan, set out from Harwich’s Saquatucket Harbor bound for Nantucket for breakfast and a little shopping. It’s a common trip for Fleming, to what he calls his little hideaway. Fleming moored the Shamus at the Nantucket Boat Basin for what they hoped would be a day of enjoying the island.

About 10:30 a.m., however, the weather began to change. It turned colder and the wind came up, something those who spend time in boats know can make things unpleasant for passengers. The two headed back to the Shamus, ready to make the 20mile trip back to Harwich.

Once on the boat, Fleming made a little detour, intending to show Aslan a few of the sights he’d enjoyed around the area, like the view of Nantucket’s Great Point, and possibly the seals off Monomoy Island.

They veered off course to an area where few pleasure boats could be found at this time of year now that summer is over, and especially on a day when the seas were a bit choppy.

Not far away, another boat found itself in unfamiliar territory. Thirty-six-year-old Captain Peter Marshall’s lobster boat, the Venture, is a working boat, no pleasure cruiser. Marshall has more than 500 lobster traps set up near Gloucester, where he usually plies his trade. On this particular day, however, he and his mate, a seasoned 48year-old fisherman known only as Jimmy D, took the Venture to where the tuna were running off Nantucket.

Around noon, the choppy seas got the best of the Venture. The waves swamped the boat so quickly Marshall could only issue a few quick “Maydays” before he and Jimmy D had to make a split second decision: stay with the boat or abandon it and try to save themselves.

Marshall later told Fleming that Jimmy D, a seasoned veteran of many near-disasters on the sea, exhibited a calmness in the face of that life-or-death choice that saved the day. The two abandoned ship.

Also nearby, the Shamus was heading straight into the Venture’s wake. The first Fleming knew of the disaster was a trail of flotsam in the water, a package of paper towels, a cooler, a fishing buoy and then, the empty life raft. The scenario seemed “kind of crazy,” as he recalls. Then, the situation escalated from crazy to downright surreal.

That’s when he saw Marshall clinging to a piece of wood, and Jimmy D in a wetsuit hanging on to the cover of the cooler. Fleming quickly radioed the Coast Guard with the news that a fishing boat was down and two crew members were in the water. He then circled around and got close enough to get both men into the Shamus.

The reality of the situation is distinctly at odds with the drama the act has assumed, Shamus says now in retrospect. At the time, it seemed just like picking up downed water skiers; in reality, he was saving two lives.

Once the two were safe, Fleming and Aslan gave them water, radioed the Coast Guard and were instructed to head to Chatham. On the way, a Coast Guard rescue ship met them and transferred the fishermen for the trip back.

Fleming took the Shamus back to Harwich and then drove to Chatham to check on Marshall and Jimmy D. There he heard from the Coast Guard what a near miss they’d had. The body temperature of the two fishermen, who’d been in the cold water for about 15 minutes, had dropped to 91 and 92 degrees.

“The harbor master said, ‘You don’t realize, if you hadn’t been there, these guys would have died,’” Fleming recalls.

The Maydays they’d sent out had been too brief; the Coast Guard had never gotten a fix on their position. If not for Fleming, the Coast Guard might have been wandering for days looking for them. That mission would have turned dismally from rescue to recovery.

The two fishermen escaped with mild hypothermia. Jimmy D was taken to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis for treatment of an injured wrist.

Back in Chatham, Fleming took Captain Marshall down to Hyannis to check on his mate, Jimmy D, and on the way, the two processed the whole experience. Fleming offered help to Marshall, a fisherman who’d lost everything but the traps up in Gloucester that he now couldn’t service.

Marshall declined help, but Fleming gave him the same advice he’d received in 1987.